A Beating Heart
by Wombat-Slayer
Summary: The infestation process re-visited and re-edited


He feels his heart racing, pounding, pumping precious life blood so fast he can feel it surge in his veins. His blood is warm but even still he is cold. He is naked. He is alone. With agonizing effort he forces his eyes open and looks around. The atmosphere around him is thick and eerie green. His lungs start to burn. He doesn't know why. His eyes bulge as he finally realizes he's not in air, but submerged under a green body of liquid. He opens his mouth to scream, to breath, and like an open drain large quantities of liquid rush into his mouth, forcing themselves into his lungs.

Clenching his fists in frustration he tries in vain to pull his arms in towards his body. Now that he knows he submerged, he must swim and reach some unseen surface. Yet his arms are held fast. His legs are the same, spread out with his arms to form the likeness of Da vinci's Vitruvian Man. Without hope, he first panics, thrashing wildly about suspended in mid-air; the soggy ropes hold their prisoner fast in his exposed position. The struggle continues, though this time not in panic but primal desperation. His head throbs, eyes darken. He is losing consciousness. His arms suddenly go limp and soft as the bindings suddenly become around them. As his eyelids flutter and shut, his body floats lazily about in the briny concoction like an interpretive dancer at the close of a moving piece. He thinks no more. Feels no more.

Creatures dark as night, parasitic and deadly creep along the branches in rows like train cars. He doesn't know, doesn't care. His life is no longer his own. They begin to erode away at the flesh on his chest. In moments they are down to the bone, which they leave untouched. Within his ribcage his heart is no longer racing as it loses pressure, and is slowly digested and dissolved by tiny creatures of the unknown; He has no need for hearts; He has only the need for minds. They spread to his limbs, taking in microscopic amounts of flesh in their even smaller mandibles. Flesh to muscle, muscle to bone they work quickly and efficiently enough to be the envy of all carrions and scavengers alike. Tearing cartilage from his ears and nose they discharge the tasteless tissues into the brine around them. Next is the tender skin on his neck, boring through spine, draining the spinal fluids that mix with the blood coagulating in the mess. They press on, only leaving the brain and eyes in tact and in the skull. Almost everything is consumed ravenously by the marauders, but they are not mindless: they work not for life but for the Her, and Her for They, and They for Him. He who controls all.

As they finish the legs and ankles, the others come, their abdomens swollen with eggs which they deposit in the soft still warm brain. But these eggs aren't a house for more parasites; from the eggs burst forth small tendrils, nourished by the soft tissue. First smothering the brain, they quickly they grow in girth and length, entwining around the rest of the skeletal structure.

Finally comes the end. The left over fleshy particles in the air absorb the green liquid that surrounds them like sponges. Pulsing and gathering the remnants form the likeness of a twisted human heart. It is distorted, mangled, and pulsating with a sickly glow. Some tentacles release themselves from the skeleton and latch onto the pulsing heart. They seize and force it into a makeshift cavity representing the late host's chest.

When the job is done and the body complete only then are the bonds released and the chamber drained. As it drains the body floats lifelessly covered in tentacles in a crude shape of the man that was. The chamber, a fleshy empty pod now, opens and light floods in. No longer eerie green, but dark and colorless, the air here is thick only with the smell of rotting flesh and still blood.

He feels his heart racing, but this time it isn't his heart. It's His heart, His mind. He raises his head, his bloodshot eyes wide and lidless. Arms of bone and tentacles raise up the body and awkward legs force it slowly forward towards a target: his armor.

Stumbling to his suit, now almost a worthless shell, (he feels vaguely in what's left of his mind and remembers the monster that had put its claws through it) he seizes the helmet. This new man no longer needs oxygen, so the he doesn't bother to attach the tubing from the breast plate on the wall. He assembles the chest pieces first and then the lower half. His other hand tries to force itself in vain inside a tattered robotic glove, only to burst it into pieces. His boots are thankfully oversized and are fastened securely despite the writing appendages surround his feet. Slowly, surly, the armor is reassembled.. A slimy arm wraps around the rifle at his feet.

Fully prepared, he stumbles towards the light at the end of a tunnel. He doesn't know where he is going. He only feels his heart beating, his brain pulsing. As he steps out into the searing colors of his new world, he shields his bloodshot eyes and gazes across the landscape and the war in front of him. Muzzle flare and explosions dot the landscape. He first walks out, seeing the see of creatures ahead of him. Something still left in his mind fears the beings around him with their pointed teeth and long claws. But he know also that he shouldn't fear. He is one with the Swarm. He feels His calling urging him to move forward quickly. As his legs began to throw him forward in a sprint, he feels a tingling sensation inside his stomach. Like a chemical reaction waiting to happen.

He feels his heart racing, pounding, pumping virulent explosive toxins through his veins.


End file.
